Lies, Damned Lies, and STEM Statistics

[Chris]

Just the facts, ma'am.

Lies, Damned Lies, and STEM Statistics

Concerns about the number of women in STEM are misplaced for three reasons. First, the definition of the “T” is STEM is narrow and arbitrary (a lie); second, the definition of the “S” in STEM is narrow, arbitrary, and flagrantly wrong (a damned lie); and, third, while the causal attribution of sexism to explain low numbers of women in STEM (narrowly defined) is undoubtedly true in particular cases, it is unconvincing as a general explanation of the relative low numbers of women in some broad fields of PhD study. Better explanations for these disparities are readily available.

Victory for Women in US PhD Awards Nine Years Running

In the US, women have earned more PhDs than men for the past nine years....



I found these figures in an article published by the World Economic Forum. Read in a straightforward way, they show women are doing better than men in terms of acquiring PhDs.

...Dubious Definitions of Science and Technology

STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. However, when people speak of “STEM” it seems they understand the “S” in STEM to refer to “hard” sciences like physics and chemistry but not “soft” sciences like psychology and neuroscience. The “T” in STEM seems to refer to computers, cars, oil refineries and aircraft but not to X-ray machines and fMRI scanners used in health, carbon-dating technology used in archaeology and vast corpuses of textual data processed on computers used in linguistics and political science.

The “E” refers to engineering. The “M” refers to mathematics. I have no complaint about the “E” and “M,” my argument focuses on the narrow definitions of the “S” and “T” in STEM.

Some technologies are arbitrarily excluded (lies) and some sciences are arbitrarily excluded (damned lies) from what counts as STEM. These arbitrary exclusions result in a warped and gerrymandered definition. Narrowly defined, the aggregate figures for “STEM” are as shown in Table 2:



...When STEM is accurately defined, using broader and more realistic definitions of science and technology, it turns out that women earn 50 percent of STEM PhDs as shown in Table 3:



...

[Sergeant Gleed]

Since males are being discouraged from attending college and since they are being discriminated against in college, it's not surprising that females are showing stronger PhD numbers and graduation rates.

How to shut up morons babbling about how women are paid 70 cents on the dollar paid to men:

Since every moron that makes that retarded claim also believes that all businesses are run by greedy males who want nothing but maximum profit, as the moron why those businesses wouldn't fire all the men and hire women, thereby saving 30% of their payroll expenses.

[Cthulhu]

Since males are being discouraged from attending college and since they are being discriminated against in college, it's not surprising that females are showing stronger PhD numbers and graduation rates.

How to shut up morons babbling about how women are paid 70 cents on the dollar paid to men:

Since every moron that makes that retarded claim also believes that all businesses are run by greedy males who want nothing but maximum profit, as the moron why those businesses wouldn't fire all the men and hire women, thereby saving 30% of their payroll expenses.

Fact.

And no. They can't dispute it, but they will ignore it.

Sent from my evil cell phone.